The 202-MW project moves CPS Energy further towards its long-term goal of supplying 20 percent of customers’ peak electrical demand via renewable energy sources by 2020.

Iberdrola Renewables has completed the development of the 202-megawatt Peñascal Wind Power project near the Texas Gulf Coast.

The power generated at Peñascal, which uses 84 Mitsubishi turbines, will be delivered to the customers of CPS Energy of San Antonio and the South Texas Energy Cooperative (STEC).

Both CPS Energy, the nation’s largest municipally owned energy company, and the STEC have 15-year agreements in place to purchase Peñascal’s output.

The coastal wind that powers the project blows during the late afternoon “when electricity is needed most for air conditioning during the hottest hours of the day”, said Barry Smitherman, chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC).

It is being hoped that the project will help in reducing wholesale electricity price spikes in South Texas. Wind power development in Texas has more than quadrupled since the establishment of Renewable Portfolio Standard in 1999. In July 2007, the Texas Public Utility Commission announced its approval for additional transmission lines that could deliver as much as 25,000 megawatts of wind energy from remote areas in the state to urban centers by 2012, depending on how many wind farms are built.

In addition to the production of renewable energy, Iberdrola Renewables also focused on avoiding or minimising environmental impacts on birds, wildlife and wetlands. The company commissioned wildlife biologists who spent three years and more than 4,000 hours in the field, studying the site and avian patterns.